Saturday, May 31, 2014

Movie review - "Alakazam the Great" (1961) **

Fans of the TV show Monkey Magic might get a kick out of this animated feature from Japan, which tells the origin story of Journey to the West - Monkey being king, going power crazy, and starting on his trip.

AIP picked it up and dubbed it into English, adding songs from Les Baxter - Frankie Avalon plays Monkey, with support from Dodie Smith and Jonathan Winters. It's a piece with a lot of charm and cuteness, decent atmosphere; there was a lot of plot and set up and to be honest I struggled to follow it at times. 

But there's also plenty of action and Frankie Avalon is an ideal voice over person for this sort of thing.

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